Gilia

Wouldn't this make all Stalker teams insanely good? 8 players layering on the debuff on an AV so that everyone ends up with something like 40% to critical?

If it was character to character, then if you reduced the crits, you would have to GREATLY increase that +% to crit. This mechanic as you described would have a net effect on average DPS that is far less than defiance is for Blasters. It would slightly assist ST damage against large targets, sure.

Also, without the team +% to critical, the average damage of a Stalker, post-AS, still would not match a Scrapper's unless the target was very large, or of moderate difficulty and no one else was damaging it.

I think this problem, from the OP on, should include "what do you think is wrong with Stalkers?" It is my perspective that Stalkers are slightly less survivable than Scrappers, can only match Scrapper's ST damage post-AS on large tight packed teams, and can't match a Scrapper's AoE capability. That leaves them typically being built around AS. With a low threat level, little AoE, no taunt powers, and so on, I've never ever felt that the interrupt on AS was unfair or a problem.

As it stands, to solidify a defined role, I believe Stalkers need to do as much (or more) ST damage as a Blaster, while maintaining that they are almost as tough as Scrappers. So, if I were castle I would datamine to find the discrepancy in damage between Blasters, Stalkers, and Scrappers, and modifiy the damage modifier and critical chances on Stalkers accordingly. I would not even consider altering the Stalker mechanics so much that (small though it may be) the current Stalker fan base might not be pleased. Removing the interrupt, changing the sets to match Scrappers, and pushing the critical mechanics towards that of a Scrapper's removes what is most of what is unique about Stalkers. It removes the point of playing a Stalker. Most importantly, if we asked "what is wrong?" those solutions suggest that what is wrong is that Stalkers aren't Scrappers. Frankly, that's a silly way to look at it.

By the time Corruptors/Controllers get Speed Boost, you're on the verge of a level range where almost everyone can manage their own endurance. Sure, Defenders get it well before 20, but if you team you'll zoom right to 20. The +recovery is nice, especially against sapper types, but the +recharge is better.

Because of the +recharge it should be up all the time, on everyone, unless they ask to not have it. The +recharge can translate into oodles of goodness. It could mean permadom for an ally, or perma AB on whoevers tanking, or all the highest DPA attacks going off 20% more often. It means increased survivability on anyone with a click heal. The only set up where the +recharge could be bypassed is for an ally who has their recharge maxed to do their highest DPS chain repeatedly already.

I'll admit I've dropped the ball a few times, and hit on folks because their blue bar was dropping or because they had to ask. It does get tedious, and it can be annoying. Not doing it means I'm not doing my job though. ...and no, keeping SB up all the time doesn't make you a buff bot or mean you're not contributing elsewhere. Fire off one or two between mobs if it's a fast team. If it's a slow team hit 4 - 7 of them between mobs. It's so easy...

I'm not sure if you mean to correct me or just casting your vote because I mentioned this as a possibility. Just to clarify though:

I don't think it would be too weak either. Perhaps I could have emphasized my language with bolds or something, but I said this was some people's idea and the even if it were true (I do not think it is), that a set being too weak is not a reason to make it unavailable. Too powerful is a much bigger deterrent.

I am also a big fan of Sonic Resonance. Hence I said I would play it on an MM if it came to them.

I can imagine circumstances where I would very much rather have FF or Sonic R, but that's pretty subjective anyway.

I'm pretty sure the in game text is misleading on this to give this impression. However, Scrappers have a 5% chance to critical against minions and underlings, and a 10% chance against everything else (Lts, AVs, Giant Monsters, what have you). Stalkers base chance to critical is 10% against everything and increased by 3% for each ally within 30'.

So do you mean to lower their chance to critical against minions or raise their chance against lts+?

Now, if they raised the damage modifier to match the Scrappers, I could see lowering the chance against minions. However, Scrapper's higher propensity to AoE damage allows them to make quick work of minions as it is. Stalkers having an advantage when STing minions is not a bad thing, imo.

That doesn't change his point. The problem now is if you want to demoralize, you have to hit someone you can't kill in one hit. Right now you have to choose between a chance at a fear effect on all the Sky Raiders or taking out the Engineer first. It'd be nice if we didn't have to choose.

The secondaries that had damage/taunt auras had them removed for Hide intentionally. Suppressing them while hidden wouldn't work, because many Stalkers play to be in and out of combat, breaking LoS or using Placate to regularly use AS. Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom can prevent those affected from attacking back.

RttC wasn't replaced by Hide, btw, it was replaced by Reconstruction. /WP lost QR to Hide like /Regen did.

If you did this, you'd have to come up with something for /Energy Aura (which lost its stealth power) and /Ninjitsu (which is exclusive to Stalkers).

Now making it so we can get another AoE attack back and still get Placate or AS? That sounds delicious. That's an awkward "fix" though, since one of them would have to be inherent or they'd have to put an extra power in the set. Both are very unlikely.


I agree just up the damage modifier. With Stalkers critically more often than Scrappers on teams, that would help make up for the lack of AoE damage on teams.

I've gotten good mileage out of the Presence pool with a Tanker dedicated to being able to mitigate damage and hold aggro. Having two taunts and the AoE fear was an excellent extra layer to the process. I had to give up a fair amount of damage output to do it, however. This was also a very cheap build. Using presence pool to mule cheap sets with +recharge was nice.

That's the set I have in it on my Tanker. I believe the damage proc only allows them to attack back when it hits. That might still be a problem with, say, Defenders, as the random strike back might mean the difference between faceplanting and fighting.


OP: That is awesome. I had a similar table-the-kin-Defender years ago and I respeced him three or four times before I liked him enough to play to 50. Presence pool never even crossed my mind though.

Good point. I was reviewing older arguments about MM before I responded the first time and the change to +recharge had slipped my mind. I'd be curious to know (in another thread) what the modern justification is for barring certain sets from MMs. I suppose currently it would largely be the "force multiplication" on an AoE scale of /Rad or /Kin that comes perma with SOs or less. At least with Anguishing Cry, for example, to keep it up all the time you need to invest in some +recharge.

I find it interesting that with the exception of one very weak argument, most people opposed or don't think /Sonic will come to MMs base it on the idea that it's too weak, or at least weaker than what's available now. The only reason I can see that being a factor is fewer people might play it, so it's a less useful way for the devs to spend their time. If it's not going to break the game in anyway, then why not? I would play a /Sonic MM because I like the set and would want to give it a whirl. The worst that could happen is I play on a slightly lower difficulty than with say /Thermal.

If it turned out to in deed be too weak, then the powers' effects could be adjusted accordingly.

Agreed. If you didn't get Dwarf form, you really didn't give PB/WS a chance. If you respec at 20-22 and throw slots into your Dwarf attacks, it becomes one of the easier ways to solo for a bit. Especially with Warshades, between the heal being an attack and Mire, you do a considerable amount of damage.

Unless you're dead set against teaming when you build a toon to "solo" you really should just team when you hit a hard spot and you're too low a level to justify respecing. 14-20 is a VERY fast transition when you team.

For the OP, I would say Stalker. Being able to ninja out of the box and make mince meat out of small mobs in short order makes them, IMO, the most fun melee AT to solo.

If you're looking for a total change of scenery, I would second the Dominator idea. If you do go Mastermind, make sure to pick solo appropriate sets. A Mastermind with sets that lend themselves more to support (e.g. necro/pain) is a total chore to solo.

Lastly, everyone's favorite whipping boy, a /dev Blaster. I love soloing that set to pieces. It doesn't level the fastest or anything, but you've got your caked in stealth, with IOs you can easily soft cap Ranged defense (or S/L if you went with //Cold or //Mace), and you can set the difficulty to whatever your patience level is. That is to say, I LOVE upping the difficulty and laying 12 Trip mines before I start a troublesome group. I did Archery/Dev, too, so I would open with Aim+RoA without LoS, and when they turned to get me... BLAMO!

That would certainly make ITF interesting, if all of a sudden all the Novas and Dwarfs were shooting off cold and fire attacks, whether they were Bright or Dark of course.

But I don't see the devs using a rudimentary understanding of how different forms of energy are related to change HEATs. If they did, the logical conclusion would be Fire/ blasters could shoot Electricity even if they didn't take /Electric and so on. There's nothing to suggest Kheldians are more powerful than old fashion super heroes, nor that they have more control over energy in general.

Kheldians have a "solar power" motif, hence their powers incorporate types of stars and other solar entities. The implication is they use "light" powers (and Nictus in contrast have "shadow" powers). The ability to create or remove electromagnetic radiation does suggest that a Kheldian could produce fire, and so on, but not in a usable way. The reduction in damage for a Kheldian "fire" attack to make any sense would be so low that no body would use it. For electricity, it'd be even worse.

All that aside, there's nothing to suggest that Kheldians or any other AT have more control over the energy they produce than they already do. Here in the real world, people produce a lot of heat energy that's just released into the air. It's not like we could decide to redirect that heat in a new way to voluntarily set fire to objects. There's no reason to think Kheldians could reform the energy they produce now in a different manner.

I always assumed that a large part of it is Flashfire's long cast time. Most of the time when I hit someone with a ST hold (less than half the cast time of Flashfire), they don't get to return fire.

Compare this with the AoE hold with Ice/ or Mind/ which take 2.03 seconds (like most of the holds) they usually don't retaliate... most of the time my experience is what you're describing.

I'd be curious to know if the fact that Flashfire does damage has anything to do with it.

Can anyone check to be sure, does Stalagmites allow them to retaliate? That's similar to Flashfires with a slightly lower cast time. That actually covers all the AoE mezzes that do damage I think. There's Terrify, but its damage lets them attack through the fear either way.

Either way, just jump-joust around a corner. Like while strafing jump and hit Flashfire at the same time. It will go off, and if your jump lands around a corner or otherwise breaks LoS they won't retaliate, at least not as much.

The +Level enemies get a +ToHit if they are 6(!!!) levels above you. That's a pretty rare threat.

While this advice is very true, and you should keep it in mind especially when soft capping squishier AT's defense, I wouldn't worry about it here. Why's that? Mid's is only set to 1 mob with Invincibility. Three is the lowest I would consider that, since that's how many minions you will see soloing at /x1, and only fighting one or two enemies, your resists would cover you anyway. The most notable exception here would be an AV using psi-typed attacks. That's a scenario that you may end up relying on inspirations and teammates in anyway, since that's the nature of /Invulnerability.

With Invincibility at 7 or 8 (not at all unreasonable while teaming) S/L is at 57%. That's enough of a buffer, IMO, ymmv, etc.

That's kind of an interesting theory... Physical Perfection would be boss on a VEAT, and Fireball with their ranged modifier might be over kill. However, Ball Lightning is almost as good and that pool has two other AoEs, so perhaps not.

There's also a heavily implied "source" of power for all the EATs. This is why their origins are forced. For HEATs, the bonding with a Kheldian is the source of power. Since the Kheldian can't shoot fire, make ice storms, etc, they can't access epics. For VEATS the source is Arachnos training, so it makes sense that they can be trained/empowered by Arachnos officials. Again, they can't shoot fire, etc.

It would be neat if the game at some point employed a wider array of possibilities. Like a Kheldian bonding with an already super being, or Arachnos putting a mutant whose latent powers haven't manifested yet into the Widow program. This would probably result in inspired powersets for other ATs though, rather than a change to the EATs. Of course, as it is you could make a Radiation Blaster and color the powers white and call it a special sort of Peace Bringer.

The 10 original ATs are all completely open ended. You can mix and match primaries and secondaries to your heart's content, with or without explanation. Your origin is not enforced, and so on. Since there's no restriction on "where your power come from," the epics are wide open.

Remember that VEATs have the largest base of powers to choose from as it is. That's the price you pay (i.e. balance) for restricted power sets.

Like it was said, you can have 5 7.5% from sets and another 5 7.5% from LotG.

With 136%, you should hit Hasten then Domination, and then Domination will come up once before it drops. Like you can Domination twice in a row. To do perma, you need at least 70% before hasten. Even then (which you're close to), it's going to be a delicate dance. Any -recharge or delay on clicking Hasten or Domination and it will drop.

Also in addition to the previous notes about where you can mule an LotG, the //Psi pool has Link Minds and Indomitable Will.

You should post your build and we can see if you can get some more recharge without giving up too much.

Just glancing at the combination in Mid's, I figure if you did Entropic Chaos in Flares/Fire Blast, Positron's in Fire Breath/Carrions then Malaise in Seeds you'd have your 5 6.25% recharges. Then you could do Basilisks in Strangler and Vines and Manticore in Blazing Bolt for 3 of your 7.5%. Then mule 3 LotGs in Stealth, Grant Invis, and Combat Jumping and you'd have enough to be perma Dom pretty comfortably.

The first proliferation was issue 12, and the second was issue 16. It is reasonable to expect the next would be at issue 20, as if they were every 4 issues.

BaB, I believe it was, said before issue 12 that he wanted to see all the possible proliferations happen then, but the amount of time it would take made it impossible. Instead, they squeezed out a proliferation for each AT (and an extra for Brutes, so they could take advantage of the then new weapon specialization). So it would not be unreasonable to expect that, other than sets they've explicitly said they won't proliferate, eventually we'll see them all proliferated. Hopefully they have been working on this silently and will drop a few proliferations into issue 20.

Sets that won't be include Empathy (and therefore, probably Pain Domination), Dark Miasma, and Ice/Ice to Brutes.

http://www.totalvideogames.com/City-...ure-12452.html
It's interesting that the article even left the possibility of Kinetics on Masterminds.

I was actually just thinking about this the other day. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but when you roll it's always the "max level possible." Which is your level +3, or the maximum level of the set. I'm not in a place to test this at the moment, nor have I been at any other moment where I was thinking about it. I rarely do random rolls so I don't have a concrete memory of whether it works like that or not.

If that's the case, I would say the best results are at level 32. All the heavy hitters for inf that can be rolled will roll between 30-34, and at level 32 they would come at as level 30 or 35 recipes. Either 30 is the set's cap, or your level+3, 35.

People are suspiciously attracted to pieces that are a multiple of 5. I suspect it's one part OCD, one part ingrained from pre-IO days. That is a "I'm going to update my SO's at 22, 27, and 32" sort of mind set.


Using the random rare recipe drop chances that were compiled on the wiki, I estimate about 21% of the drops are something worth a significant chunk of inf. About 1/4 of those (6% chance) are worth maybe 100 million (health procs, LotG+rech, etc).

In regards to the OP, my A-Merits have been worth about 60 million on average thus far. I mostly deal in LotG+Recharges with the occasional roll.

Of course it fluctuates. I held off for a bit because shortly after i18 we saw a sharp drop in LotG+recharge prices (I imagine folks reposting and buying them ASAP with A-merits was the cause), but the price has been climbing since then.

This game isn't a far cry from other MMOs. Just because she hasn't played CoH doesn't mean she can't handle a Corruptor. Whether it was sexist or not, it was still presumptuous.

I'd put in a vote for something like 2 Fire/Dark Corruptors. Cycling between Rain of Fire + Tar Patch from level 6 on will get the ball rolling fast, and you can quickly in your careers keep at least one instance of RoF+TP up all the time. Another neat one I've considered would be Archery/Storm Corruptors.

If you plan to just duo (like no other teammates) a lot of the time, you may want to consider Dominators. Not that two Dominators wouldn't be an awesome addition to a team, but early on they are heavy on single target attacks and controls. If you went this route, about anything would work. I'm inclined to recommend Plant/ (doubling up Seeds of Confusion is amazing, plus you'll get a whole green house worth of pets) or Ice/ (pretty simple and very effective with SOs, because of Arctic Air + Ice Slick). For Assaults it's often times 6 of one. /Energy, /Earth, and /Ice have Power Boost instead of a Build Up/Aim, so that's something to consider. /Energy can fill out an all ranged continuous attack chain early, but it's knock back wouldn't be so great with powers like Ice Slick.

In my experience, if you Duo a Dominator or Controller, you should have the same primary. That way you can stack similar powers to ensure you hit the whole mob and mez bosses quickly. For the /Assault on a Dominator, whether you want to be ranged or melee will make a difference. If you did Plant/ or Ice/, then I'd say for melee go /Earth, for ranged probably /Psi.

Fascinated is a good word for it.

In regards to the OP I would just add Ice Melee as a possibility to Dechs' list. Frozen Aura does Foot Stomp damage with sleep instead of knock down and then you have Ice Patch. That means you'd have access to sleep, fear, knock down, and disorient all PBAoE. If mez is your sort of mitigator, that might be a lot of fun.

I agree that's probably it. I've thought there was some discrepancy along these lines on the only devoted trio I've been a part of. However, it always seemed like the mission owner/s had more experience.

Is it possible that some of the experience due to the pact mates hadn't paid out yet when you checked? It might be worthwhile to do this test, leave them offline for a bit then check again. I've had the experience pay out and level me suddenly when it was very unexpected and I wasn't that close to leveling.

It shouldn't be relevant, but I'm just curious... did the non-pact mate own the mission, or one of the pactmates?

I can't think of anything that should cause this if it was all working as intended though.

Are you really insinuating that myself or another responder are trolls when in fact YOU are posting patently false information for no apparent reason other than to stir up trouble? Perhaps you're confused about what a troll is.

In pacts, XP is separated before it's granted. If you get extra for DXP or PXP, that goes into "the pool" which is then split between the two. You don't get the extra XP, and then some amount is sent off to the pact mate.

There are some issues with the system, but their related to server issues and whether both pact mates are online. There is a corrective measure in place though. Once the exp is off between the mates, ALL of the exp will go to the mate with less exp.

That's really cute that you've taken a few pact mates to 50. I've taken more though. See how valuable such a claim is?

Then, of course, there's what Macskull said.

Edit: and oh, duh. You're claiming to be the expert on PXP when your previous post said it was worth "double xp." So what, you took all those pact mates to 50 and never noticed it's only 50% extra experience? Amazing. Just... amazing.

LOL!

For one, Patrol isn't double XP. For two, if they were only playing together that wouldn't explain the discrepancy.

Now, if the Controller spends a ton of time at the market or accidentally walks away from the computer while in the base (where it won't DC you for being AFK), they could fall behind on patrol.

I'm curious if you were doing story arcs and happened to finish one of the Defender's arcs without finishing the same arc for the controller. That bonus XP could explain the jumps if you're only playing together and monitoring debt.